I Got Comic Booked!

This has been an exciting week for me as a writer and as a comic book geek!

It started on June 24th over Twitter. I was hanging out in my corner of the Twitterverse, as I do from time to time, and a tweet from Comic Booked got my attention. Now, it should be noted that I’d only recently started following them. I don’t do the random follow thing on Twitter very often, and I’m certainly not one to follow back just because you started following me. (Here’s a tip: Engage me in conversation and I’m much more likely to follow you.) But as it turns out, my timing was impeccable. The tweet read:

Want to write for Comic Booked? Email admin@comicbooked.com for more information today! Positions will be filled this weekend!

Now, the first thought that went through my mind, after the initial shock and excitement passed, was that this was my chance to make my dreams come true. It’s no secret that I’m a huge geek. From a very early age, I’ve been collecting comics since the first Transformers issues and watching Adam West’s cheesy take on the Caped Crusader every morning in my terry cloth Batman robe. The years have not diminished this in the least, and I can argue both sides of the Marvel vs. DC debate with the best of them. (And yes, I still have some of those Amalgam Comics issues the two companies published together.) I watch my favorite heroes come to life in movies and TV, both live-action and animated, and I put myself in their shoes in many of their video games. And back when I had a budget for such things, I’d visit as many of the comic book conventions in the area as I could, if only for the chance to shake hands with some of my favorite writers and artists.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Comic books have been a part of my life since I was a little boy, just as much as writing. So you can imagine my excitement at the opportunity to merge my two great passions into one awesome position on the Comic Booked writing staff! I just had to make sure my email to them conveyed two things clearly:

1) I really want to write for them.
2) My geekitude knows no boundaries.

Apparently, it worked as well as I wanted, because I got a response back that Sunday morning, June 26, from the Editor In Chief of Comic Booked. They liked what they read, and bumped me up to the second phase of their staffing process! That meant I had to write up a sample article for them to make sure I was a good fit. Normally, this would be a slam dunk for me. I’d spend the majority of the day working up a stellar article that would make Perry White exclaim “Great Ceasar’s Ghost!” and email it in, no problem. There was just one little hiccup: I was about to embark on a day-long process of moving furniture that would effectively remove me from my computer and any ability to churn out a quality article!

As I tend to do, I bemoaned this new torture in my life on Facebook. In moments, I had a private message from the CEO of Comic Booked that read:

If you're busy today, you can send something in tomorrow. Or, you can let me know here why you want to join the team and we can go from there. I know how it is when you're busy, so no worries at all.

Yeah. The CEO of the company I wanted to work for friended me on Facebook and gave me, a hopeful recruit, permission to submit my sample article a day late because of my dilemma. My desire to join their staff doubled in that moment, and that's a conservative estimate.

After killing myself to finish moving my stuff in record time, I went home and spent the rest of the night working on my sample article. I knew I had an extra day to submit it, but I didn’t want to waste any time. (I might also have wanted to prove that I can meet crazy deadlines by getting it in as early as possible.) I wrote up a great review of one of my favorite DC Universe animated movies, Wonder Woman, gave it a quick self-editorial pass, then sent it off before passing out from exhaustion. Maybe I would have an email from them waiting for me when I woke up.

Or maybe not.

As the week progressed, I grew more and more worried that I hadn’t heard from them yet. Was my writing not up to their standards? Did they not like my review? Hundreds of “what if” scenarios played out in my head, all revolving around what I could have done differently in my sample article to make it more interesting, more exciting, more more. It was agony, I tell you, of kryptonite poisoning proportions.

Then, early on Saturday morning, I got an email from the EIC. I made the grade! I'm now part of Team Comic Booked!

As of the posting of this entry, I’ve made the acquaintance of some of the other new writers who were hired alongside me, as well as the site’s editors. (And I already know one fellow recruit!) My pic and mini-bio have been submitted for inclusion on their Meet the Team page, and I’m already privy to some of the inner workings of this amazing group of fellow geeks. In the coming weeks, I’ll know more about my role on Team Comic Booked, and you can expect many posts from here on out linking to my articles on their site. In the meantime, I’ll be over here, basking in the glow of realizing a dream come true.